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Belarus Will Surprise World With Its New Labor Code

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Belarus Will Surprise World With Its New Labor Code

It is planned to include the norms leganizing forced labor into it.

Mikalai Zimin, Chairman of the Belarusian Independent Trade Union, has told praca-by.info about the attitude of independent trade unions to the amendments in the Labor Code: this autumn, Belarusian Labor Code may become the worst in the whole world. It is planned to include the norms legalizing short-time form of hiring and forcible labor, into the Code.

The “House of Representatives” plans to consider the draft bill on making amendments and additions to the Labor Code, initiated by the government, during their autumn session. The unprecedented innovation is including the norms of the Decrees ## 5, 29 into the Code. The mission of the democratic trade unions is to prevent the inclusion of the said norms into the Code and thus to save it from worsening.

Besides, from the legal point of view, nothing will change for ordinary workers, as the decrees already have the force of laws. The fact that they will appear also in the Labor Code will in no way affect the working conditions of the labor people. However, it is worth to remind that the decrees have temporary character and should be canceled after a certain period of time. This is what the independent trade unions have been struggling for since 1999, the time when the Decree #29 “On extra measures on improvement of labor relations, strengthening of working and executive discipline” was adopted. This decree actually implemented the contract system.

Since then, almost all employees have been transferred to the short-term form of hiring. Herein, by the regulation of the Plenum of the Supreme Court dated June 26, 2008, such practice was recognized as deterioration of the legal rights situation of the workers. This is simple to explain: workers lost the right to quit independently and without consequences. Now it is possible only under an article, when changing the place of residence, and upon the agreement with the employer.

Moreover, before the expiration date of a labor contract, the people worry if the employer would renew labor relations with them.

Moreover, it is planned to include the norms of the Decree #5 into the Labor Code as well. According to the above, an administration has a right to significantly change the working conditions. This gives us grounds to claim there is forced labor in the country.

The Belarusian Congress of Democratic Trade Unions repeatedly raised these issues at the level of the ILO and the International Confederation of Trade Unions.

The government definitely has certain goal, and it’s not the “increasing of flexibility of the labor relations”, and “securing the workers’ social and labor guarantees”, as it was stated. The workers already were on a short leash in the form of the short-term contracts, and it will remain unchanged. Moreover, these norms will not affect the growth of revenues of the labor people in any way. Our country’s economy, by its essence, remains Soviet, and what’s important is that it is unable to reform under today’s conditions. The authorities will never be able to keep here those specialists who run away from Belarus, with such methods.

That is why the Belarusian Independent Trade Union and the unions-members of the Belarusian Confederation of Democratic Trade Unions stand not only against the inclusion of the norms of the Decrees ## 5 and 29 into the Labor Code, but for the total abolishment of the said norms. Before the start of the autumn session, we have sent over 110 letters offering not to vote for these amendments.

At the enterprises where we have our primary organizations, we have started collection of signatures for non-inclusion of the norms of the decrees into the Labor Code. We are also collecting electronic signatures under the online petition.

We are not going to hush down the matter, regardless of the fact that the number of members of our trade union remains incomparable with the number of members of the pro-governmental Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus, which promotes these changes to the Labor Code in concert with the “deputies”. Everything depends on the activity of our people. Nothing prevents non-members of our trade union from visiting the website and signing against the amendments to the Labor Code.

Collective actions proved effective a year ago, when the authorities tried to adopt the law “on parasites”. This is a good example of achieving good results by resisting stupidity in joint ranks.

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